


Fire, Ashes, and the Shape of Friends

by Angel Ascending (angel_in_ink)



Category: Game Grumps, The Hidden Almanac (Podcast)
Genre: Basically a Hidden Almanac fic guest starring Dan Avidan, Crossover, Gen, Gift Fic, Transformation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-08
Updated: 2016-11-08
Packaged: 2018-08-29 16:37:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8497510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angel_in_ink/pseuds/Angel%20Ascending
Summary: Drom and Mord come across a strange bird in the courtyard of the Ravencoast School of Divinity. A prequel of sorts to "Ozone and Strawberries."





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TheseusInTheMaze](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheseusInTheMaze/gifts).



> Happy birthday Theseus! <3 
> 
> This is a prequel fic to "Ozone and Strawberries," which you don't have to have read to get this, but it doesn't hurt. 
> 
> The Hidden Almanac is a fantastic podcast and can be found here: http://www.hiddenalmanac.com/

Echo Harbor had quite the tourist trade. There was a zoo and a brewery, all the restaurants had fantastic food and the antique shops were full of curiosities that made them quite desirable to casual weekend antique hunters and more serious collectors. And of course the beach, because who didn’t love the beach? A large portion of the town fund was spent on promoting tourism, and not one citizen complained. They loved tourists. Without tourists, who would they sacrifice to the Wicker Man? Who would the cultists lay out on their alters? Locals? You couldn’t go around sacrificing locals. That was just, well, rude. 

The acolyte of the Lord of Eternal Fire carefully drew the last rune of containment in the five circles of channeling and got to her feet, checking her handiwork carefully. It was her first time being trusted with such a sacred task and everything had to be perfect. 

The sacrifice whimpered from the very center of the five circles. His eyes were wide as he struggled against the chains that held him flat against the floor.

It was almost time for the ceremony to start. The acolyte carefully stepped over lines and runes until she was in the sacrifice's line of sight. He made desperate noises behind his gag.

"Shhh, it's going to be okay." The acolyte said soothingly. "You should be grateful, not just anyone can be a vessel for the power of a god."

Outside the bells began to toll, signaling sunrise. The acolyte exited the circles and took her place as the other acolytes began to file in. She didn't notice that the edge of her robe  had faintly smudged one small but significant rune of containment.

The chanting started.

Then the screaming.

Then the burning.

\-----

Anyone watching the sunrise in Echo Harbor or any of the surrounding towns would have seen the a phoenix shaped blaze of light rising into the sky. For a moment its wings stretched for miles, its flame briefly turning a chilly fall morning into high noon in the desert before it vanished. It would later be explained away as an astrological and meteorological anomaly. There would be one person in town who would recognize it for what it truly was. 

\-----  
A small, flame colored bird flew unsteadily across the sky, occasionally wheeling in wobbly, uneven circles before flying straight again. It had been flying for hours. Everything was wrong. It was the wrong shape, wrong size, its head filled with hazy half memories of being something huge that flew and also something smaller that walked on two legs. It was tired and hungry and everything was wrong.

It looked down at the ground below it. Buildings. A courtyard. It fluttered down to the ground, landing among the other winged creatures that fluttered and cooed around it.

——  
Some people brought a bag lunch to work. Pastor Drom bought a duffle bag lunch to work and it took up most of the bottom shelf of the fridge in the faculty lounge. Occasionally someone new who didn’t know any better would comment on this, and then everyone else would back away slowly as Drom, dressed in her rainbow vestments and looking like everyone’s favorite elderly aunt, cheerfully descended upon them and gave a lecture about kindness and compassion for all the creatures of the world. This usually ended with the recipient of said lecture sobbing quietly by the fountain while feeding their lunch to the variable menagerie that tended to gather in the courtyard of the Ravencoast School of Divinity. Because Drom didn’t just pack lunch for herself (two sandwiches usually: peanut butter, jelly, and mayo and sometimes cucumber, turkey, and hummus), but for the *multitude.*

There was cheese for the winged rats (apricot Stilton was a favorite), white roses for the miniature unicorns, honey for pixies, and peas for the pigeons. There was also a few issues of any old magazines that Drom found lying around, in case any of the library’s mini-sphinxes dropped by, and bottled tears for the grief drinkers. There were other various odd foods from her cupboards jumbled in the bottom, just in case something new came by that didn’t like anything else she had on hand. Anything that drank blood would have to go hungry, Drom’s compassion only stretched so far.

It was an early fall day in the City, one of those clear, bright days where the air was just starting to develop a bite to it and the leaves were beginning to show their autumn colors. Drom sat on the edge of the fountain, drinking a bottle of water and tossing peas to the pigeons while she waited for Mord to show up. They ate lunch together most days. Well, no, they didn’t really, because Mord didn’t eat, at least, not that Drom had ever seen. He usually just sat near her and read the paper or whatever musty old book he was currently focused on that week, and only occasionally responded to Drom’s chatter. Still, it was nice having him around, and Drom always kept something in her bag for Mord’s crow, George. He was an excellent crow. 

The courtyard was quiet except for the trickle of water from the fountain and the sound of cooing pigeons, so when the weird noise started, it quickly drew Drom’s attention. It was a sound like if a musician had carved a wooden flute, and then had set the flute on fire, yet somehow still managed to play the flaming instrument. It was a very singular sort of sound, and Drom soon discovered it was a very singular sort of creature making it, a red and orange bird that the other pigeons were giving a very wide berth to. 

“Hi there! I haven’t seen you here before. Was that you singing? I used to sing all the time, but I don’t do it around people anymore. When they cover their ears and start screaming about the visions it makes it really hard to stay on key. ” Drom would talk to anything, whether it looked like it could speak back or not. It was only polite, and you never could be sure these days what might speak back to you. “Are you a fancy pigeon? I usually only see pigeons in black and white and that gray blue purple sort of color with the green. You’re very pretty. Do you like peas?” 

Drom tossed another handful of dried peas down and the fancy pigeon pecked at them in a sort of reluctant manner. Around them, the peas started to turn slowly brown and began to gently smoke. The red and orange of the bird’s feathers seemed to flicker and shift like a candle flame as the bird made the burning flute noise again. It sounded sad. 

“Huh. Well that’s not something you see every day. Never heard of a fire pigeon before. What do fire pigeons eat?” Drom rummaged through her bag and didn’t notice the shadow falling over her.

“I believe that is a phoenix, Drom.” 

The words were gray and rounded, like stones, and Drom made a little noise of surprise as she looked up. “Mord, how many times do I have to ask you to make some noise when you walk? One of these days you’re going to scare the life out of me.”

Mord, wearing his usual full plague doctor attire, kept looking at the small fiery bird. “That is highly unlikely.” Thanks to some instabilities concerning time, Mord knew the day and possibly the manner of Drom’s eventual martyrdom. Being scared to death didn’t factor into it. On his shoulder, George the crow made a croaking sound and hopped down onto the stones of the courtyard, near the possibly a phoenix, and made a questioning noise. The other bird answered back with a sad sort of fiery hiss.

“So that’s a phoenix?” Drom reached into the duffle bag, pulled out a small ziploc bag of Cheetos, and tossed some towards George, who darted forward and snatched them up before they got too toasted from the presence go the other bird. “I thought phoenixes would be bigger somehow. Or more majestic. No offense,” she said quickly as she tossed a handful of Cheetos towards the two birds. “George, do I have to give you a lecture about sharing?”

“There has not been a true phoenix on this plane of reality in over two thousand years.” Mord said. “However, today is November 8th, 2016. Every hundred years, on this day, the acolytes of the Lord of Eternal Fire perform a ritual to draw the power of their god into a human vessel. In theory, this might also change the shape of the vessel into something not unlike an aspect of the god himself.”

“I should have brought the recording equipment,” Drom muttered. “Could have recorded half the show in advance.” 

Mord ignored her and continued. “This morning there was a fire in Echo Harbor, at a place I have long thought might house an order of phoenix cultists.”

“Mord, it’s Echo Harbor. The trick would be finding a place that didn’t have cultists in it.”

“As I was saying, there was a fire, and for a moment the flames took on the shape of a phoenix. I believe that someone got careless and their sacrifice was able to escape.”

Drom watched the possible phoenix scarf down a Cheeto like it was starving. “Sacrifice? So the cultists go and kidnap someone, and go through the work of calling down the power of their god or whatever, just to kill it? Seems kind of anti-climatic. I mean, phoenixes are all about death and rebirth, right? Where’s the rebirth part?”

“It is said that the cultists then ingest the sacrifice in the hope that doing so will grant them life after death.”

The phoenix shrieked, the sound of a forest fire filtered through the vocal cords of a bird. It flapped its wings and for a moment the bird was half the size of the courtyard and the fall chill was replaced by a hot breeze. It rose about a foot in the air before dropping back to the stones. For the space of a blink it became a man made out of fire, with a cry that was almost human, before shrinking back to something the size and relative shape of a pigeon. Its feathers glowed dully, more like a live coal than a candle flame, and its head drooped.

“Mord! You scared them! Don’t worry little guy, we’ll get you back into your proper shape. Right Mord? We can do that? Somehow?” When you have a friend that spends all their time in a plague doctor outfit, you have to get really good at reading body language, though the robes made it hard. There was a slight tenseness to Mord’s shoulders, and the leather of his gloves creaked as he clenched them into fists. “Mord?”

Mord was watching the bird intently. “It is wrong to force someone to be something they are not.” His voice held strange echoes, like black water falling over dark rocks in places no one goes. 

Drom swallowed, trying to keep their tone light. “That didn’t actually answer my question.”

Mord’s fists unclenched as George the crow flew back up onto his shoulder. “There are things I can try, if we can get him over to the test garden.” Mord reached down and picked up the unresisting bird, only to quickly and gently put it down again when his robes started to smolder. “Ah. Right. I believe I have something a bit more… fireproof in my office. I will be right back.”

Drom watched Mord walk away before returning her attention to the bird. “It’s going to be okay,” she said with as much cheer as she could muster. “How about we find you something else to eat while we wait?” She rummaged through her bag a little haphazardly. “We have cheese and candy corn and—“

A white rose fell out of the bag, petals scattering on the ground. The bird dashed for the fallen blossom and began eating the petals at the exact second that Drom knocked over her open water bottle. There was a splash, a hiss like a campfire going out, and then silence. 

\-----

When Mord returned to the courtyard fifteen minutes later, he was only mildly surprised to find the phoenix gone and a tall young man with wild hair sitting next to Drom, wearing the rainbow robes that Drom usually wore, though they were woefully short on him. He looked dazed, and was chewing ravenously on a sandwich, no doubt part of Drom’s lunch. 

Drom got up and walked over to Mord, smiling widely. “Mord! You’ll never guess what happened!”

“A miracle, I presume.” Mord made a mental note to write all of this down later, for posterity. 

“Well yeah, that,” Drom said almost dismissively. “I mean, all I did was spill some water on him while he was eating one of the white roses I had in my bag, then poof! He was all man shaped again and also not on fire, which is good. I don’t know his name or anything, he hasn’t said anything since he stopped being a bird.”

“White roses and running water,” Mord said thoughtfully. “That’s—“

“Traditional,” both Mord and the young man said at the same time.

The young man sighed and ran his hands through his thick, curly hair. A few tiny orange and red pinfeathers drifted down onto his shoulders. “This is just like the time with the fairies,” he muttered. “Wait, why did I say that?” He sighed again, sounding exhausted. “My name’s Dan, Dan Avidan, and I think I was mugged? Or drugged? The last thing I remember that makes any sense was getting off the bus in some place called Echo Harbor. I was supposed to be catching another bus, going to California. I’m a singer.” Dan looked down at his hands. “Shit, my notebook. I had some good songs in there.”

“Mugged, yes, you were mugged, and totally not kidnapped by cultists or turned into anything,” Drom said quickly. “Don’t worry, we’ll get your stuff back.”

“We will?” Mord asked. 

“We will,” Drom replied, shooting him a Look.

Mord knew better than to argue with Drom when she was focused. It would only lead to headaches.

—

They put their guest in the recording studio after getting him a shower and change of clothes (one of the many things interns were useful for, spare clothes), where he promptly, encouraged by Drom, started playing around with the recording equipment.

“It’ll take his mind off everything,” Drom said. “And hey, maybe he’ll be famous someday and we can sell the recordings!” Drom was a practical sort and knew that miracles and the sales of semi-erotic pamphlets could only take a radio station so far.

The building in Echo Harbor that had burned down that morning was nothing but ash and rubble. Maybe it was luck, or fate, or divine intervention (the number of saints and minor deities devoted to music was very large, musicians needed all the help they could get), but a bit of prodding unearthed a oversized beat up backpack like the one Dan had described to them. Everything was still in it, including a ticket to California marked for two days ago, which could be sorted out at a bus station in the morning, Drom was sure.

Dan was laid out asleep on the couch in the recording room when Mord and Drom returned, his feet sticking out over the end of the couch as he snored faintly.

“Awww, poor guy must have been exhausted,” Drom whispered as she set Dan’s backpack down where he’d be sure to see it in the morning. 

“Transformation of any sort is very tiring.” Mord said. To anyone else, his voice would have sounded like the same odd monotone it always was. Drom had been around Mord way too long not to be able to pick up on the micro-inflections though. They spoke of experience. 

Drom thought about asking a question, then thought better of it. For all of Drom’s half jokes about Mord being anything under his robes (up to and including a swarm of scarab beetles) she knew that whatever he was, he was the shape of a friend.

Mord later took note of Drom’s silence as a minor miracle, and wrote it down for posterity.


End file.
